Those who focus on the U.S. national debt (and I’m one of them) keep wondering how long this debt levitation act can go on.

The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is at the highest level in history (106%), with the exception of the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. At least in 1945, the U.S. had won the war and our economy dominated world output and production. Today, we have the debt without the global dominance.

The U.S. has always been willing to increase debt to fight and win a war, but the debt was promptly scaled down and contained once the war was over. Today, there is no war comparable to the great wars of American history, and yet the debt keeps growing….

In what was incredibly appropriate timing given the ‘shocktober’ market blowup, Bloomberg News invited “Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb to its set on Halloween for a discussion about the increasingly fragile market ecosystem in which we all reside, and the mounting risks that, Taleb believes, could soon ignite another financial crisis that will be even more severe than what we saw in 2008.

Taleb, dressed up as “black swan man”, wasted little time in explaining how the global economy is becoming increasingly vulnerable to a global debt crisis, how the global quantitative easing did nothing to fix the underlying problem of too much debt – instead it exacerbated it – and how the inevitable reckoning might play out in markets once the long-dreaded “inflection point” finally arrives….

A healthy economy is a precondition of American renewal. But it is not the end state.

Not even Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Joe Biden, could put a negative spin on Friday’s jobs report. The U.S. economy created some 250,000 jobs in October, beating expectations. The labor participation rate increased even as unemployment held steady at 3.7 percent. That’s a 50-year low. The best part: Wages rose 3 percent in the highest rate of growth since the Great Recession a decade ago. “Pretty much everything you could want in a monthly jobs report,” Bernstein tweeted….

In the two years since the 2016 Presidential election, President Donald J. Trump amassed numerous successes. His efforts are arguably the best of any President during this relative time period in spite of massive headwinds from the corrupt prior administration, the Fed, the Democrat Party and their MSM!

It is often stated that there is a major financial crisis every 10 years or so. Having said that, it’s been a little over a decade since the Lehman Brothers collapse sparked the last global financial crisis (GFC) and with global economic growth starting to show signs of petering out, some in the media and elsewhere in the public eye are forecasting another global financial crisis in the very near future.

There has been a variety of reports from prominent analysts lately with predictions as to when the next crisis will hit and what will spark it. Strategists at J.P. Morgan Chase recently made a splash with their announcement of a new predictive model that pencils in the next crisis to hit in 2020. Additionally, J.P. Morgan’s Global Head of Macro Quantitative and Derivatives Research, Marko Kolanovic, has highlighted a potential precipitous decline in stocks that could cause what has been termed “the Great Liquidity Crisis.” He identified the shift away from actively managed investing toward passive investing strategies such as exchange-traded funds, index funds and quantitative-based trading strategies, as well as computerized trading as the potential culprit, which could not only be the catalyst for the next crisis but could also exacerbate the fallout….

President Trump criticized the Federal Reserve again last week, singling out the central bank as the “biggest threat” to his administration’s success. Earlier, he accused the Fed of having “gone crazy” by raising interest rates too quickly. Many long-time Fed watchers were taken aback by these candid remarks, since previous Presidents have deliberately refrained from commenting on the Fed’s policy actions.

Still, President Trump has a legitimate concern. Federal Reserve officials see higher interest rates as necessary to prevent inflation from rising. But higher rates also make borrowing costlier for households who want to buy new homes and cars, and businesses who want to expand and create more jobs. Thus, the President’s remarks invite us to ask if there is any truth to the charge that the Fed is raising rates too quickly and thereby putting the economic expansion at risk. Fortunately, the latest data suggest that the Fed has not “gone crazy.” Recent interest rate increases are justified, given the renewed strength of the U.S. economy….

President Donald J. Trump has taken on the Federal Reserve (Fed), saying that Fed chairman Jerome H. Powell is threatening US economic growth by further raising interest rates. Mainstream economists, the financial press and even some politicians react with indignation: the president’s comments undermine the Fed’s political independence, potentially endangering the confidence in the US dollar. Such a public reaction is, at first glance, understandable – as mainstream economists have declared the political independence of the central bank a “golden calf” issue.

Monetary theorists argue that a politically independent central bank is best for the currency and the economy. As a result, most central banks around the world, including the Fed, have been made politically independent. But is this so? Well, if the economy thrives, politicians leave the Fed alone. If the economy stumbles, or if the Fed pursues unpopular measures, it runs the risk that Congress or the president may revise the Federal Reserve At of 1913, stripping it of its power. In fact, the Fed’s monetary policy cannot deviate too much from the Congress’ and the president’s political agenda….